About Me

I am a master planner and a self-professed book dragon. As the Launch and Operations Specialist at Author Accelerator, I work to help authors achieve their dream of completing a book. In my spare time, I read and review books.

What I Hate About Reading

Okay, who came up with these monthly topics? Oh, yeah, right me. Man, oh, man this one is tough. I’m not even sure this one is going to make sense in the end.

How I Avoid my Reading Pet Peeves

I want to keep reading quality books, but quality is determined by the reader so even though I’m not a fan of Harlequin romance novels doesn’t mean they should be erased from the planet. They obviously have an audience and I don’t feel bad that I’m not a part of it. I just don’t read those reviews or venture into that area of the bookstore. Problem solved.

How I Embrace My Reading Pet Peeves

I’m a bit sick of the awkward girl with the special powers she doesn’t know she has and is saddled with saving the world. But every once in awhile I hit a gem that turns the story on its head (or at least its side) and I want to find more books just like that. (See this recent review as an example.)

Insta-love gets a tad boring, but I’ll admit that once or twice year, I want that in my life. The sense memory of falling in love is intense and brings a smile to my face. And usually those books are quick reads and I can get back to the darker novels I tend to gravitate towards. (Have you read this one? Or this one?)

My True Reading Pet Peeve

I wish more authors invested in themselves and their books. I’ve received some horribly formatted books where the story is compelling, but poor formatting or poor editing stops me dead in my tracks. (I’ve found I can get past poor cover art because it’s not staring me in the face once I open the book.) Poor editing or poor layout can kill a book. And I feel like a total jerk when I have to email an author and tell them I can’t finish what seems to be an awesome book because it is poorly edited or the formatting makes it impossible to read.

Investing in your passions is important. I’m a blogger. I don’t get paid to do this (yet). But I’ve figured out that I have to fork out a bit of cash to get this blog to do what I want it to do and I have to invest in MYSELF as well. I’ve found that investing in myself might be the most important piece. So I’ll pay $10/year for a self-hosted WordPress blog on a quality host. I’ll fork out $99 to learn a bit more about social media and become a certified Social Media Marketer. Why?

I’M WORTH IT.

And you know what, you’re worth it, too. Sure, it might mean you take your lunch to work every day or you wait till a movie comes out on Netflix instead of going to the theatre. Or you wait until that new release is available at the library. But it needs to be done if you want to live within your passions. It needs to be done so you can be truly and authentically happy. To grow, you have to invest in yourself. And sometimes, that is biggest step, right? To say, “I’m worth it. I deserve this. I want this. This is mine.” is a big step. And I dare you to take it.

Quick #ShelfLove Challenge Update

I spent some time re-reading in February to prep for the Linn Area Reads event. Markus Zusak is visiting my town in mid-March. So the only #ShelfLove Challenge book I finished is The Book Thief. It was a slow month reading overall for me, but as we get closer to spring I’m seeing my reading speed pick up a bit again.

22 responses to “What I Hate About Reading”

I read a little of every genre, and I do so because I easily get burnt out of a genre/series if I read too much of it. As a result my pet peeves are minimal. I am not a fan of whiny heroines and miscommunications makes me insane.

Hahah I love how you yell at yourself for coming up with the questions, too funny. I do not like insta-love, really ever. Unless there is some logical explanation, and then I am still iffy. I am also realllly sick of the “ordinary girl” turned “special”. And ANY books with the “bad boy” trope. I guess I just try to make sure I don’t pick those books up but you really never know! I am not TOO picky either, but like you said, I just won’t go to areas of the bookstore that I don’t care about! (Oh- and I feel you with bad formatting. I feel like that would not take too long to fix, right? Especially when it’s your livelihood and pride!)

I would be curious to know, from an author or someone who formats books, why some of them end up the way they do. Maybe it is not either parties fault. But right now, the only source I know of is the author especially in a self-pub situation.

Love triangles. How many times does this actually happen?! Seriously, not enough to be so common in books (and movies for that matter). Bad typesetting. Yes! Bad typesetting can make me want to toss aside a book. I’ve also noticed this more in the self-published or small press published books.

I don’t mind insta-love either but it needs to be done a certain way for me to enjoy it. I also actually really like Triangles and don’t mind them as much but again those have to work for it to work for me. I just recently realized that I have a hard time reading YA Romance because I cant stand the angst of it all. I am not saying I will never read them but it’s not something I plan to grab for a while.

I need to read Jim C Hines’ other series, I loved the Princess Series.

Interesting format! It’s true that the right author or story can make a pet peeve trope compelling again, sometimes (though one of mine is embarrassing situations, and I haven’t yet read a book that deals with them in a way I don’t dislike).

That bad formatting thing can be frustrating. One of the authors I work with I used to send out ARCs for her sometimes and I would get really frustrated because when I would use the CONVERT feature to convert from PDF to Kindle format, they would look horrible and have words stuck together and stuff. That didn’t happen with other books I’d use that feature for – and the PDFs looked fine. It was REALLY annoying and I couldn’t ever figure out why it happened. I think she eventually upgraded to a newer version of Word and it took care of the issue – but it’s hard when sometimes you have no idea why it’s happening! It didn’t happen with final .mobi files or anything – just her ARCs, but as an editor, that really rubbed me the wrong way. She was taking the time (and the money) to hire me to make sure her book was well-edited and then ugly formatting ruined it!

I agree with you about the formatting and grammar! That is actually the reason why I am wary of self-pub books. Not that all indie books are bad, but most self-pub books are not formatted at all and it drives me nuts!

I also try to mentally correct wrong grammar so it takes out of the enjoyment that I would have had if not with the horrible grammar. 🙂

I must admit… my reading trope pet peeve is DREAMS. I can’t stand dream sequences! They’re almost always unnecessary, or a terrible way for an author to attempt to work in some heavy-handed symbolism, and then to make matter worse, the characters frequently dissect the sequence we just walked through, so you have to read them TWICE. Dream sequences are a surefire way to get me to never read a book, so I’d really like authors to stop writing them — or learn how to do them properly to draw readers in instead of shutting them right out.

This is a new trope to me…or maybe one that doesn’t annoy me. 🙂 I never thought of how we “watch” the dream as readers and then have to “watch” the character dissect it. I’m going to keep an eye out for it now and see how well (or not well) it is done!

*haha* I was wondering myself who came up with the discussion topics, Terri! I found this month’s particularly challenging for some reason. 😉 I like how you broke it down though. And I’m in love with the investing yourself in your passion part…and the challenge you put forth! 😀